Half Life 2: Episode 1

Our newly revised testing procedure for HL2:EP1 is a far better method than what we have used in the past. The three timedemos that we now use for our testing suite are situated throughout various levels in the game that offer dramatic lighting changes, lots of neato explosions, and an absurd level of texture details that are well suited for putting a sizable load on any video card. We started off testing the 8800GTX with HL2:EP1 on low settings, just as we did with F.E.A.R and Quake 4. HL2:EP1 is also a CPU limited game on the low end, although it is far more demanding on the CPU than either F.E.A.R or Quake 4, as is demonstrated by the lower frame rates.


As you can see, the performance advantage here is actually shifted somewhat toward the 7900GT, but the differences are really minimal. This isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Now let's see what happens when we turn the settings up all the way.


These are some interesting results here. Unlike in other games, the performance with the 8800GTX did not really drop at all with increasing resolutions. This would suggest that the 8800GTX has taken a game that is clearly GPU limited with less powerful graphics cards, and has made it, in effect, CPU limited. So then, not only do we see a performance increase of as much as 49% with the 8800GTX, but we have also totally wiped out the GPU limitation of the game. Pretty impressive indeed.

Call of Duty 2

CoD2, though getting old, is still one of the most graphically intensive games in our arsenal. In our Kentsfield Performance Review, the 7900GT was taken almost to the point of “unplayability” (state of performing below 30 FPS) in CoD2. Not only is CoD2 graphically intensive with details turned up, it is also somewhat GPU limited on the low end. Running the 8800GTX should actually yield some significant improvements over the 7900GT.


As you can see, the 8800GTX yields a pretty solid gain of about 30FPS at all resolutions. You can also see that even with the 8800GTX, Call of Duty 2 is still GPU limited on the low end. Turning the details all the way up should give us more of the same results.


This time we have a pretty solid 20 FPS increase across the board with the 8800GTX. The G80 based card also gives a good 70% increase over the previous generation 7900GT on the high end in CoD2.